Aston Villa Boss admits ‘I was frustrated’ when we were beaten 3-0 by Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday afternoon.

Unai Emery believes Aston Villa deserved better in their defeat at Liverpool – and praised his team for not capitulating in the second half.

Dominic Szoboszlai’s early thunderbolt was followed by a Matty Cash goal inside the opening quarter before a second-half Mohamed Salah strike secured the Reds an impressive 3-0 Premier League victory at Anfield on Sunday.

Despite being outplayed for lengthy periods, Villa had chances either side of half-time to drag themselves back into the game with Alisson Becker making a fine stop to beat out a Cash header shortly after the interval.

And Emery said: “It is difficult to win here and the first half was the key because after the first goal we were not bad, we had the chances, we trying to play imposing our positioning but it wasn’t easy to do it.

“When we were breaking their pressing we were getting into the box and we had chances, but we were not clinical and 2-0 was not really the result we deserved for the first half.

“Second half we said we would continue our gameplan and if we scored one we could get back into the game. We had two chances at the beginning of the second half but didn’t score, and they created one in transition and they scored the third goal and it was match finished.

“We tried to be focused because in Newcastle (on the opening weekend) we lost five goals in the end and we didn’t want that here. We knew we couldn’t win but we can’t accept to give them more goals.”

While Darwin Nunez caused constant problems running in behind the Villa defence in the first half, Emery dismissed suggestions of playing too high a line by pointing to the origin of Liverpool’s three goals.

“Sometimes it was offside, sometimes not,” he said. “But we conceded two goals from set-pieces and one from long crosses from the right side. We didn’t change anything about our style.”

Emery instead pointed to the early departure of Diego Carlos as a key moment in the game, the centre-back substitutd through injury after only 19 minutes.

“The biggest frustration was the injury of Diego Carlos,” said the Villa boss. “It is not a big injury but the idea with Diego Carlos was to be stronger with Konsa and Pau. Last week in Burnley and today we started confidently in our structure then still keeping the same idea and then playing sometimes in long ball positioning but I think our next step is being consistent with the ball in our positioning

“We are in the process of trying to build a team. The frustration against Liverpool was a little bit less than Newcastle, Newcastle we lost 5-1 and not being consistent in our gameplan and after the third goal I accepted we’d lose but never accepted the last minutes not being focused.”